WILDFOWL AND WILDFOWLING 
were right. For the pursuit of wildfowling afloat has fallen from its former 
standard. The glamour has faded. Hard and uncertain of success as this 
sport ever was, it is now tenfold harder and more uncertain still. The 
cause of this deterioration I have already indicated in my “ Art of Wild- 
fowling,” and need not recapitulate. 
I recently found among some MS. notes by my late brother, Alfred 
Crawhall Chapman, the following appreciation of wildfowling : 
“This pursuit has one superlative attraction — that the prolonged 
suspense and excitement enjoyed while manoeuvring, and finally drawing - 
in upon the fowl, resembles nothing else that I have experienced in 
other forms of sport with gun, rod, or rifle. As to the shot itself — ^well, 
the strain on the nervous system in trying to assure the fullest effect, 
after all the labours undergone to secure it, is sometimes almost too 
poignant ! Still, the joys of success, however scarce, with these terribly 
wild creatures, and the inward sense of having overmastered difficulties 
that approximate to impossibilities, are one’s sufficient reward. 
“Another supreme point in its favour is the charming variety in sea- 
game, many of them objects lovely in themselves — perfect pictures of 
pure bright colour as you lift them off the waves. Many, moreover, are 
but little known, or at least less familiar than any other British birds. 
On the other hand, it is certainly the hardest work that men pursue 
for pleasure. You lie prostrate on your chest, sometimes for hours, and 
a gunning -punt provides the most comfortless of couches.* Your weight 
resting on your elbows, knees or hips, those prominent parts should 
be constructed of steel instead of flesh and bone. Then the prone position 
necessitates a very awkward angle of the neck in order to keep the 
eyes bearing horizontally — the neck-muscles should be of whipcord ! 
“ The fowler is for ever scheming, devising, contriving to outwit his 
wary quarry ; yet, in the majority of cases, the fowl have it pretty nearly 
their own way. There is no certainty. You may have 5,000 geese before 
your eyes day after day ; yet, after a fortnight’s chasing, may not have 
secured a score ! 
“ Again, to the purely amateur fowler, who only perhaps spends a dozen 
or a score of days afloat each winter, the chances are that he will strike 
‘ the most favourable circumstances ’ about once in ten years ! 
“ Those who are not more or less inured to really hard work; careless of 
* On one occasion when the author had brought down an armful of oat-straw to lie on throughout a bitterly cold 
winter’s night afloat, his puntsman scornfully remarked : “You must be one of them hot-house plants 1 ” 
385 
ODD 
